American Life in Poetry: Column 508

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

It seems we’re born with a need for stories, for hearing them and telling them. Here’s an account of just one story, made remarkable in part by the teller’s aversion to telling it. Poet Mary Avidano lives in Nebraska.

City Lights

My father, rather a quiet man,told a story only the one time,if even then—he had so littleneed, it seemed, of being understood.Intervals of years, his silences!Late in his life he recalled for usthat when he was sixteen, his papaentrusted to him a wagonloadof hogs, which he was to deliverto the train depot, a half-day’s ridefrom home, over a hilly dirt road.Lightly he held the reins, light his heart,the old horses, as ever, willing.In town at noon he heard the station-master say the train had been delayed,would not arrive until that evening.The boy could only wait. At home they’dwait for him and worry and would placethe kerosene lamp in the window.Thus the day had turned to dusk beforehe turned about the empty wagon,took his weary horses through the cloudof fireflies that was the little town.In all his years he’d never seen thoselights—he thought of this, he said, untilhe and his milk-white horses came downthe last moonlit hill to home, drawn asfrom a distance toward a single flame.